I WILL
by Astrid Goes For A Spin
Summary: I WILL be a ballerina, ride a horse, live in a castle, visit Iceland and America, have a boy and a girl. Ziva follows her girlhood dreams, and they lead back to the dreams of her womanhood and the man she dreamed them with.
1. I WILL be a ballerina

**I'm not entirely sure if this story could ever be considered canon, and you all know I'm a stickler for canon. But I've come to the point where it just doesn't matter anymore. My tribute to eight years of Ziva, the only way I know how to give it.**

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I WILL

_be a ballerina_

_ride a horse_

_live in a castle_

_visit Iceland and America_

_have a boy and a girl_

.

_"__You know…I used to spend most of my time on stage searching the audience for my father's face. He was never there."_

Her confidence is gone. She used to be cocky, full of herself, and she had the skills to back up the talk.

Now, she is painfully aware that she has not worn a leotard for almost twenty years, done a plié or looked at herself in a wall full of mirrors in a lifetime.

"I would like to take some rudimental ballet lessons," she tells the woman at the desk. "Is there a class for adults?"

"There is," the woman smiles.

She fills out papers and buys her materials and shows up every day for three weeks straight. Her muscles are not used to moving in ways like this, movements smooth and elegant, not sharp, movements to please people and express beauty instead of break bones and draw blood.

_She_ bleeds, of course. The bottoms of her heels, her bunions, the side of her head when she slips and smacks her head on the bar. Her knees, when she slides and gets friction burns.

But it's strange. It's beautiful, to exert herself without the purpose of preparing herself to cause pain. She makes temporary friends with the other women in her class, meets their children and husbands and wonders whether she's pulling her life together or not. She is, she thinks.

She's nervous, actually nervous, before she goes out onstage. She, a "cold-blooded assassin," nervous.

She makes a conscious effort not to look at the audience while they dance at their first and only recital, but she can't help herself. She's a grown woman now, and she feels six, looking into the audience for her father's face.

Eli will not come. Tali and Ari and her mother, who all used to come, will not come.

_"__You're never lonely when you have kids. Good night, kid."_

_ "__Her father left her to die in a desert."_

_"__I think you already missed your chance to rescue Ziva."_

She searches, almost unconsciously, and imagines she sees her father's face, proud of her. The way Eli never had been.


	2. I WILL ride a horse

The second installment of "I WILL." A bit shorter than the first, but rest assured; the other chapters are longer than this.

**In case anybody is fretting, this whole thing is pre-written, and it's just when I have a minute I'll update them. To my reviewers - I make a point of answering ****_every single review_****, and I will get to yours as soon as I can. Thanks, enjoy! **

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I WILL

_be a ballerina_

_ride a horse_

_live in a castle_

_visit Iceland and America_

_have a boy and a girl_

.

_"__I know this face. You made the same one when I told my brother he could not buy you a pony."_

She has not ridden a horse. _Ever._ She knows that there are plenty of missions on horseback (she's done more than a few on camelback before), even at NCIS (they were sore for days after Arizona), but she's never done it. Mossad is very technology-forward, and no one who's ever had to flee across a desert at top speed wished for a horse instead of an ATV.

But she's always, always wanted to ride one, and so she does.

The horse likes her right away; she brings it sugar even though it's not advised. It's a light color, and the horse has an ugly, thick scar across its cheek. It should be vicious and ready to bite, but when it smells her, it seems to decide she's a friend instead. Maybe it smells her own scars.

She goes for three short visits before she's deemed ready to ride by the owner of the stable, after she's learned how to saddle and set up a horse in order not to hurt him or herself.

She learns to walk him first, and she's sore afterward. She loves the feeling of him underneath her, warm and alive and working with her for their own pleasure. A few lessons later, they trot, and finally they're allowed to gallop, and she can't remember how long it's been since she felt so powerful and strong.


	3. I WILL live in a castle

**The third chapter. Don't kill me!**

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I WILL

_be a ballerina_

_ride a horse_

_live in a castle_

_visit Iceland and America_

_have a boy and a girl_

.

She looks as quickly as she can online. It's strange; her fingers, once so agile and quick at typing and clicking, have trouble remembering how to use a computer. She doesn't know if any of her accounts are still working; she cancelled nothing and has not been on the net for months and months. She can only imagine it; her emails full of spam and ads and coupons, reminders for appointments. She doesn't need the internet and she doesn't want it; Eli's diamonds and cash go far. Very far.

She picks out a German place, less perched than rooted on its hill. It takes her less than fifteen minutes. To find a hotel. To pick a room, call, make her reservation, and book a flight.

She hasn't been in Germany since Berlin. They'll always have Berlin like they'll always have Paris, as miserable and unfortunate as that trip had been.

The hotel isn't anywhere near Berlin. It's on a river and there are people around, enough people that her Israeli-accented German doesn't stick out; it's a relief not to be noticed as heavily as she usually is – even in Israel, her American accent is so strong she's still an oddity.

It's Hanukkah when she arrives. She stays the entire holiday, and, to her surprise, doesn't feel bitter about the Christmas trees and German carols; she purchases a small Menorah for herself. It snows on the third night of her stay, and the bland color of her coat stands out brightly against the pure white crystals. She never cared about snow when she lived in Israel, but has since acquired a love for it.

She has no one to give gifts to. She has no one to receive gifts from. She gives herself gifts, however. She buys a new coat through a catalogue, gets new socks, treats herself to luxurious and hot baths in the private bathroom of the hotel. She starts a snowball fight with a man walking by, who retaliates with a blue streak of incensed Norwegian that stops in his mouth when he sees the foreign beauty before him, snow in her dark hair and a smile on her face.

She doesn't learn the man's name; their fight rages for an hour before she trips and he catches her red and white fingers and kisses them until they become warm again. They don't speak, because Norwegian is one of the only languages she isn't even passably familiar with, but it does lead back to his room in the hotel, where he's staying to write a research book he was commissioned for, she understands through the crude sign language. Clothes litter the floor as things become heated and they travel, gripping each other, toward his bed.

But it doesn't go that far, in the end. She flees, and he checks out. She thanks him in German and French and English, every language she can, for their snowball fight. She wishes him luck on his book.

She retires to her bedroom and thanks herself for this Hanukkah gift, a man to hold and kiss, albeit for only a brief, brief time.

She eats and bathes and sleeps like a princess until the end of Hanukkah, and she steps out on the terrace one last time and knows she'll never come back to Germany as she gazes out at the landscape visible from the castle she lived in for eight days the winter of 2013.


	4. I WILL visit Iceland and America

There is not much to see in Iceland. She picks up as many basic phrases as she can and does the whole guidebook thing, though, and to her surprise, she loves the country dearly. They speak English there, levels of fluency inconsistent and ranging from generation to generation, but the communication is good.

The history feels familiar to her. They were outcasts of their own land and formed their own hierarchy and dominion on an island of their own, passing that down through the generations.

Nature is the thing to see. Volcanoes and hot springs and glaciers, and she visits absolutely everything she can. Unlike many tourists, she has money to burn, and when she steps off the plane, Icelandic air and water, sky and sea still fresh in her mind, eyes, ears, nose, she knows it was right to go there.

She has a list of places to see in the United States. The Statue of Liberty. The Space Needle. Yellowstone. The Golden Gate Bridge, Ellis Island, The Empire State Building, Niagara Falls, the St. Louis Arch. Yosemite, Anchorage, Honolulu, the Grand Canyon, the Met, the Museum of Natural History, Disney. The Air and Space Museum. The White House. The Washington Monument.

She goes to every single one of them, lingering and taking her time and being a tourist, doing what she never has, never could; antiterrorist ops don't often leave time for sightseeing. She notices, as she floats through the great American cities and tourist hotspots, that there are so few people alone, as she is. There are family groups, couples. Mom, Dad, yammering children. Cameras and fanny packs and water bottles. She is profoundly lonely.

Her excursion takes on a frightened feel when she arrives in Washington, and she twitches, reaching for her pistol, every time a siren sounds. Every time a sleek black sedan goes by, she lowers her face, slows her walk. She is scared like never before, scared like terrorists and solitude and death never have frightened her. What if she sees one of them? What if they come upon each other, by chance?

She is extra-vigilant and carries out her tour, straight-backed and stiff-necked. She is confident that she has seen and felt, both now and before, everything that America has to offer. She has eaten their food, been to their places of pride. She has slept in their beds, studied their culture, watched their movies. Worked in their buildings, and caught their murderers.

When she looks at the ticket she paid for, back to Tel Aviv, as she stands in Dulles Airport, she makes a choice. She takes out one of her knives and slices it neatly into pieces and deposits it in the trash as she exits the crush of bankers and businessmen and families and couples going about their business and steps outside.


	5. I WILL have a boy and a girl

**The final installment of I WILL. I finally feel confident with this. **

**For everyone, know that I'm working semi-intensely on a Ziva multi-chap, post-PPF. It's a Ziva-comes-back fic, obviously, and will include many introspective Ziva pp oneshots I've never posted, and centers around Bishop, at least at the beginning. **

**I hope this final chapter, the last fleshing-out of Ziva's will, brings you fascination and fulfillment. Enjoy. **

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She starts to have recurring nightmares. She has never been troubled by these type, before; only the men she's killed have haunted her lately. Now her own blood flows in her dreams, and she hears the screams of children, crushed between her pelvic bones as she fails to push. She hears them gasp as they can't breathe, trying and failing as blood and placenta fills their soft and tiny lungs. She isn't even pregnant.

She starts to notice pregnant women. They're _everywhere_. Round stomachs, developing stomachs, flat stomachs that hold the potential for lives inside them. Like herself. She has eggs left; she has enough eggs that if she tried, and tried, she would eventually, finally get her wish.

She knows how to get there. She remembers the way. She has no car. No cab. No bus ticket. She has only the things in her hotel, and the things on her back. The bare necessities of personal hygiene and clothing. The rest of her things are split between her former residences, probably tossed and stolen and evicted over the years as circumstances forced her to leave without removing her possessions. So she walks.

The shot-through window is no longer broken; if she hadn't known it was new she wouldn't have noticed. But she did, and she does; she imagines that it looks fresh and clean compared to the other panels.

She stands out on the street for a long time. It is night, and she doesn't know if he's home or not. He can be, he cannot be. The window is dark, but he could simply have turned the light out to watch one of his _classic films_. He could have moved. It's unlikely, however, because she knows how her partner thinks.

_We're not big on change around here._

Perhaps he has moved on, and doesn't miss her. The pain clawing through her heart at the thought indicates otherwise. He has to love her still. She did all of this – all of this – for him. If he doesn't, she has no idea how she will bear it.

Before she has to make her choice, he makes it for her. She hears the car lock beep, and she turns to see him yammering on the phone held between shoulder and ear, coat hanging over his arm and talking with his hands.

"You gotta give it a break, Bishop," he says loudly, and she thinks vaguely that he must be the most annoying type of neighbor – never home, but when he is, obnoxious. "Don't cry wolf every time you come across something weird, and if you _do_, stop calling _me_! I have a life, you know; the boss doesn't, and – oh, hi Boss. Perhaps you can tell Bish to tell people when they're on speakerph- n-no, just giving Special Probationary Agent Bishop some pointers, because she keeps calling me, and – yes I know it's none of my business-" Abruptly, he holds the phone out away from his ear to look at it. Gibbs must have hung up on him. Belatedly, he ends the call. "Bye."

She cannot move. She stands on the sidewalk and stares at him, suddenly conscious of herself. Sweatshirt and jeans and sneakers, loose hair, dark and wild after not having been highlighted for a very, very long time.

He almost walks past her. Almost. He'd always said she was a ninja. But he doesn't.

He's in the act of putting the phone in his pocket when his eyes catch hers and he drops it. The smartphone falls to the concrete and the glass screen shatters into a thousand pieces, sparking briefly once. The coat slips off his arm more slowly, catching on his suit-jacket and unfolding as it falls. He moves toward her as though he thinks he might be dreaming.

"Ziva?" So breathless. She almost wouldn't recognize his voice if she hadn't watched his lips move. His throat flexes, his eyes blink, withholding tears.

"I have done it," she says quietly. She cannot look him in the face. "I have done it, Tony. I have taken ballet lessons and performed at a recital and ridden a horse and gone to Germany and stayed in a castle and toured the United States and Iceland." _I have found peace. Redemption. Forgiveness._

He's still staring at her, eyes so wide, expression something she has never seen on his face before – open and hoping and so, so loving and tender.

He cups her face as the tears start to come down, and he moves her over to the side of his building, out of the wind. Convinced it's her. "So what now?" His voice is harder and older than she remembers it. His hairline is slightly receding. He's not, at the moment, acting like a twelve-year-old. It doesn't seem to matter.

She closes her eyes as he holds her and whispers – hoarsely, grieving, healing – around his lips and into his mouth, "I am ready to have a boy and a girl."


End file.
